One Song
by ChibiChikyn
Summary: A little girl leads a happy life before being orphaned...unintentionally? She doesn't know. All she does know is that she is flawed, can do work, and has a Gift. How does she juggle all these traits at the same time? *Includes parts related to "The Messenger" and "Son."


**A/N: Hi-i-i-i-i-i-i! So recently I read _The Giver_ and the books that followed it. It was epic! So I decided that I'd very much like to create a story with an OC (the story starts from the book _Gathering Blue_). Really sorry for the short chapter; I didn't know how to continue because this chapter is supposed to be somewhat flashback-y.**

**I hope you like :)**

* * *

Rae drowsily rolled off the straw mat she was sleeping on and pulled her eyes open. Dragging herself by her mother and father, who were still sleeping, she pushed open the curtain that served as a door to their small wooden cott. The Sun was rising against the Field they all shunned, and no matter how she tried to direct herself away from the fact that the scene was really quite pretty, she ran out the door and up a tree to get a better view of the sunrise.

She poked her head out of the top layer of leaves, sat in a comfortable position on a crag on the tree, and shielded her eyes. The Sun dyed the waving grasses on the Field and the sky a beautiful tapestry of golds, oranges, blues, purples, and pinks. The wind gently blew the grass on the Field about.

She opened her mouth to sing, to let all her feelings inside her out through the power of music.

_"Rae! I hope you're not far away! Come back in and eat!" _

Rae sighed contentedly, and breathed in as if taking all of the colors of the sunrise with her, then slid off the tree. She started walking home towards her mother's voice.

Her mother was a cheerful woman that loved nature and philosophy, and, unfortunately, also loved making fun of grumpy children.

"Hello, there, you little munchkin pixie. Your father isn't feeling well, so he won't be going to help with the carpenter over there." Rae's mother, Cadenza nodded her head in one vague direction and watched Rae flop in the door, and plop down at the table. "Something wrong, munchkin?"

"Why do they send people out in the Fields when the plains can be such a pretty place sometimes?" Rae asked, and dejectedly set her 7-year-old head on the table. Right into a bowl of piping-hot porridge.

"Now," Cadenza glanced at Rae jumping about in pain. "If you want your answer to that question, you don't scald yourself with a bowl of porridge first." Cadenza chuckled to herself and swabbed Rae with a rag. Rae howled.

"Eat up. You have work to do later." Cadenza finished mopping Rae up and Rae promptly ate her food. As Cadenza watched Rae gulping down her food, she swung a pendant around her finger.

"You still need to answer my question."

Cadenza sighed at this persistent little thing she had borne, and shook her head. "Rae, I'll tell you this. The Fields are really just- an effort to terrorize the community and...put it like this, munchkin. They're trying to scare us into working. They're trying to scare us into giving society your talents and let everyone else take your time and talent. They don't want you to be useless."

"Oh." Rae lightened up immediately, and smiled cheerfully at her mother. "I'm going to go now. When Da wakes up, tell him I said hi."

When Cadenza watched her girl skip out the door with a basket full of peaches from their own peach tree, Cadenza knew she loved that child.

* * *

"Rae! You're late! Ugh. I'll have to cut your lunchtime by four minutes." Cortina, the head of the bakery she worked at shouted over the many other shouts that filled the room. Even though Rae still had a one-syllable name, she was allowed to knead the dough and create jam that would fill the insides of many different pastries.

"I'm really sorry, Cortina. But- here- look what I brought for you!" Rae exclaimed and held out her basket, full to the brim with golden-pink peaches that glowed in Rae's basket.

"Well, I guess that's going to make up for some of you minutes," Cortina took the basket and nodded her thanks, "But you have to work real hard. You got that?"

"Yes!" Rae shouted and dashed to where a huge lump of sticky dough was waiting just for her to knead.

"Hello there, Mar!" Rae greeted her friend cheerfully as she patted the dough.

Mar, like Rae, was a tyke who was allowed to work in the bakery just like Rae, nodded back and set the cake racks above a freshly baked Washington Pie, then sprinkled powdered sugar over the racks. When she lifted the wire, there was golden cake showing between squares of snowy white sugar.

"Nice one." Rae laughed and accepted anther chunk of dough and started kneading. As she kneaded the dough, she opened her mouth and out poured a sweet melody so clear and so bright. The entire room seemed to sigh.

The ladies worked in the murky setting, clouded by flour and filled with the aroma of cooking bread and sweet jams.

* * *

Rae dusted her hands off as she made her way out the bakery where she worked, and grabbed her wicker basket filled to the brim with freshly-baked tarts and bread. She spotted Mar coming out as well, and waved to her.

"Bye, Mar! See you tomorrow!" she called out.

"Yea!" Mar replied and giggled.

Rae strolled through the dusty streets of their Village, waving cheerfully to each citizen of the Village as she passed. Almost mechanically, they nodded curtly in reply and went back to chiding their children and cleaning their cotts. Time seemed to stop in the hazy, golden, warm afternoon in their bustling and orderly Village. The buzz of people talking created an alive and comfortable atmosphere.

Yet something was not right. Rae could feel it in her little bones that something was just not right.

She swished past many other villagers, smiling warmly at each person but feeling something tweak inside her at each smile. She didn't understand. The world was beautiful, yet something wasn't right.

The little girl hurried home on the dusty dirt road, each worried step as fast as the other. She neared the edge of the village, near the Fields and dashed quickly in her cott.

"Mom! I'm back!" Rae cried, throwing the fabric serving as a makeshift door aside. "Mom!"

Everything was in order. Her mom was cooking something on the fire, and their simple wooden table with a clean white tablecloth set over was set. The wooden bowls were each scrubbed clean and smelled like pine.

"Hello there, munchkin pixie." Cadenza turned around and tapped her ladle on the side of her cooking pot. Her face was illuminated by the fire, and with her tired smile Cadenza seemed more motherly than ever. Rae couldn't resist hopping over and grabbing her mother in one huge hug.

"I love you, mommy." Rae whispered, muffled, into her mom's apron.

Her mom ruffled Rae's hair. "As do I."

Cadenza held Rae out to inspect. She nodded at Rae. "Munchkin, I need to tell you something."

Rae questioningly cocked her head to the left, blinked her clear, bi-colored eyes.

"When you were tiny, tiny, the villagers hated you for your eyes." Cadenza started, and beckoned for Rae to sit down at the fire. She organized her skirt about her and then started again.

"Rae, one of your eyes are golden-yellow-" Cadenza pointed to Rae's left eye, "And your right eye is an obsidian black. I honestly don't know why our village shuns individuality or any kind of flaw that might keep someone from contributing to the society, but if I said that to the Council Edifice they'd send me off to the Field for sure."

"But I know that not everyone has a yellow eye. Not everyone has two yellow eyes, save cats." Cadenza smiled at Rae, who giggled and covered her left eye with a hand.

"I also know, Rae, that you have a beautiful singing voice that you love to use in public. Everyone appreciates that and loves you for it. For that, people from the Council have visited our house today and asked me a couple of questions about your amazing talent. However, they also took your father." Rae's mother seemed to wilt, and Rae just noticed that her father was missing.

"Da? I didn't even talk to him today! How could they!" Rae jumped up and down and pounded the ground. "Mom, why did you let them? Why did you let them take Da?"

"If I did try to stop them, you wouldn't have your father or me left. You'd be...alone. And that's the least I ever want for you."

The little girl was sobbing. Sobbing that her mother had not tried to stop the Council from taking her father. Sobbing that they took a piece of her. "B-but you c-could've tried to s-s-stop them at th-th-"

"Now, now." Cadenza patted Rae's head. "I know that they won't do anything mean to your father. He was a good man, and he was simply a little ill today; he'll be fine. You'll be fine. We'll all be fine, Rae. Just remember that no matter how far away I seem to be, I'll always be with you."

Cadenza reached for the chain that hung from her neck, and took her necklace off. Rae gasped. "Mom, wasn't that a present that Da gave you?

Indeed, it was a chain made of sterling silver that her father had found lying in the dust. He created a small, exquisite bird that resembled a lark out of Alaskan Cedar wood, and studded it with topaz. For Cadenza's birthday, he hung the bird on the chain to form a beautiful present for her. Not many people in the village owned something so precious.

Cadenza shook her head and laughed. "It's yours now. I feel like you need your father more than I do. He was such a wonderful man, after all." she punctuated her last remark with a forlorn sigh.

"You still wish he was here though, don't you, Mom?"

"Yes."

Mother and daughter hugged by the warm fire that seemed to draw the household together without their father.

The golden Sun slowly slid down the sky, and emblazoned the sky a mixture of pink, purple, dark blue, and orange. Eventually, the Sun ducked down underneath a sea of tall grasses after allowing the Moon to throw shades over the vast expanse of plains and grasses that the Village simply referred to as "The Field."


End file.
